This is the story of how I became a knitter and made friends on Swan’s Island. As you may be able to guess from the fact that those stories are one and the same, I am not the island cool kid.
There was a point when I first moved here when I could have made an effort to reach out to people my own age. I was either too nervous or happy enough in my own company. The people I got to know first were those that I met doing historical work—not exactly spring chickens.
As a result I have a wonderful group of pals who could theoretically be my parents or even grandparents. I’ve got a head start on most of my mainland peers; I have plenty of advice stored up for future dealings with marriage, menopause and interacting with your children’s kids.
The summer before I moved to Swan’s Island, friends of mine joked about the prospect of me losing all my social skills after two years of island life. Alone on a rock in the ocean with only a cat as a companion, I would develop strange new habits. That mostly wasn’t the case—if only because my landlord doesn’t allow cats.
I’ve since learned that island life can make you more sociable, not less. People get to know you just because you’re there. In a smaller community it’s harder to isolate yourself in a group of people similar to yourself. There are great friendships between islanders of vastly different ages, beliefs and backgrounds. It’s normal out here. You make friends with the people around you.
My first social interactions were with the groups where I knew I’d be welcomed: senior walking and knitting group. Yep, pretty wild!
Picture the scene. It’s February on Swan’s Island. Some of the fishing families have run off to vacation in climates that don’t make your nose hairs freeze. You’ve eked out another meal out of the grocery run you made four weeks ago. Your house looks like the sort of place that doesn’t get many visitors. But it’s Tuesday night, so you go to knitting.
Cheri Ellison is our knitting hostess, clearly born to fill this role. Her home is immaculate. There are snacks. Her variety of porcelain teacups would make a six-year-old girl faint. She presides at the head of the table and divides her time between conversation and “hotting up” our cups of tea so diligently that I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen her knit.
Her co-leader and opposing force at the opposite end of the table is Suzette Wheaton. Suzette is a ball of energy, knits up a storm and is always ready to shock us with her latest method of killing mice. She claimed me as her knitting pupil and loudly shooed off all Cheri’s attempts at instruction.
Their methods are unique. Suzette cranks out socks and mittens as though her fingers had built-in knitting needle attachments. Cheri rips out the same scarf three times until it’s perfect. Suzette sells her goods at rock-bottom prices at her roadside vegetable stand. Cheri buys the finest yarn and gives everything away. Suzette taught me a fisherman’s knot to use when joining yarn. Cheri would rather die than have a knot in her sweater.
Of course, the act of knitting is the least important part of knitting group. Tuesday nights are our time to get together, enjoy a little break from the daily routine, and of course share all the latest gossip. The knitters change from week to week, but the tradition continues.
There’s a long history of knitting out here, due both to people’s reliance on handmade goods and the needs of a fishing community. Some knitters became almost famous for their productivity and skill.
Alberta Buswell was one such knitter. Two of her five children, Theo Buswell May and Albert Buswell, shared stories of Alberta during interviews with Meghan Vigeant.
“My mother, she had many, many talents of sewing and knitting,” Albert said. “Especially knitting sweaters. She used to make ’em, you know, and sell them. And she would knit stockings and just about everything. And magnificent quilts, patchwork quilts and so forth. She was quite proud of that. She was always not only just knitting but I think they called it tatting—where they make these fancy doilies and things.”
Theo remembers her mother’s work well.
“You couldn’t get the quilts that my mother had made in one room, I know,” she laughed. “Every grandchild has got one. And they’ve got a sweater from my mother. Everybody that had a baby always got something.
“Oh, she knit up a storm,” Theo said. “She was knitting the summer before she died. Her hands were knotted up with arthritis but she could still feel her fingers. She was 98 years old.”
“She always had to be doing something,” Albert said. “She couldn’t sit still. And for many, many years after my father stopped lobstering, they would knit the bait bags that the fishermen would use, you know, and the heads that go into the lobster traps knit out of nylon twine.”
“Alberta would knit all my heads,” lobsterman Spencer Joyce remembers. “A ball of twine she would do for about $6. It’s unbelievable”¦ that woman used to knit all the time. I don’t know how she’d do it. Her hands would be all sore and she’d have white athletic tape on her fingers where she hauled.”
Alberta passed her skills on to her daughters. Theo May knitted bait bags for many years. Bait bags are more or less what they sound like—mesh bags that hold bait. Each lobster trap gets a full bag before it’s dropped in the water. The knitted twine pattern leaves holes so that the dead fish inside can work their magic on lobster appetites.
Theo and lobsterman Joe Staples led a workshop at the library last winter for anyone who wanted to learn the dying art. Joe was accompanied by his grandsons, Marshall and Shepard, who gave remedial lessons to some of the slower learners such as myself. Given the amount of people who showed up excited to learn, it might not prove to be a dying art after all.
The knitting process takes a lot of practice to master. It’s not done like regular knitting—even the tools are different.
“Well, you’ve got a needle and what they call a mash [mesh] board,” Theo said. “You have to take it up on a ring and knit the bag down and then close it off. Then you take bigger stuff in the other end of the bag and go around and pucker it up so that that bottom part is what opens up. You put your bait in and then pull it up tight to tie it on your trap.”
Island knitting crosses the gender divide as well as the generational. Fishermen mastered the skill to make and repair their equipment. Historically, sailors knitted as a way to productively pass time on long voyages.
Johnny Wheaton’s grandfather, who was born in Nova Scotia, came to Swan’s Island around 1917. He was unable to fish after losing a leg in a trawl fishing accident.
“What he did after was sit and knit heads, pockets, big trawls,” Johnny said. “Now in the summertime, ‘course, he would work on the fish wharves—splitting fish, shacking fish, and stuff like that.”
Theo explained what heads are used for:
“You see that trap out there, you see that orange part inside? That’s the head. That’s where the lobsters go inside, right there. There’s a hole that they go up inside and then they fall down into the trap.”
More recently, heads became available for purchase in a pre-knitted roll.
“It’s probably been, I’m guessing maybe ten years since these started to come in,” lobster trap builder Donnie Carlson said of the new heads. “About the time, fortunately, that the head knitters who were knitting for me were getting old in age anyway. There are still some fishermen that would like to have those type of heads, but there’s nobody on the island that will do it professionally.”
Donnie remembers the knitters well.
“Usually it was a visit,” he laughed. “You would go in to get the heads but you couldn’t just walk out. You’d have to talk, and sometimes have a cup of tea or a piece of pie, something like that. So it was definitely a very social type of thing. I enjoyed talking with the older people.”
We Tuesday knitters are hardly on the same scale as the professionals of old. A few of us sell our products at local craft fairs, but as far as I know none of our work has been directly responsible for catching a crustacean.
What does remain the same is the heart of it: the stories and the support. And it sometimes that’s just what you need.
Kaitlin Webber is an Island Fellow on Swan’s Island through AmeriCorps and the Island Institute. She works with the island’s historical society.